New claims totaled 505,137 for the week ending April 18, up from 180,419 the week before.

Nationally, more than 4.4 million laid-off workers applied for U.S. unemployment benefits as job cuts escalated across an economy that remains all but shut down, the government said Thursday.

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Roughly 26 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the five weeks since the coronavirus outbreak began forcing millions of employers to close their doors. About 1 in 6 American workers have lost their jobs since mid-March, the worst string of layoffs on record. Economists have forecast that the unemployment rate for April could go as high as 20%.

Florida, by far, saw the greatest growth in claims last week, the result of a giant backlog of people who had been unable to file earlier. Other big states, including New York and California, saw fewer new claims than the week before. New claims in Texas increased only slightly.

After taking public heat for weeks for failing to promptly process hundreds of thousands of jobless claims since mid-March, the Department of Economic Opportunity disclosed last week that it sent relief checks to only 40,000 people out of 650.000 claims processed.

This week, the agency disclosed that it had upgraded its troubled computer system, enabling the state to more than double the number of claims processed in a single day.

Still, hundreds of thousands of people were waiting for checks to arrive, and more still had found no success in filing their claims.

Some companies are hiring, with the jobs mainly in the service sector. CareerSource Broward, a nonprofit employment organization.,is conducting the first of a series of virtual biweekly job fairs starting May 1, said spokesman Javon Lloyd.

Some of the early employers signed up to participate include Dominos, Walgreens and Walmart, and smaller local companies such as Parker Yacht Management, a repair and restoration firm, Infinity transportation, a limo service and Premier Aircraft Service.

“What we’re running into a lot are businesses that are generally on pause right now,” Lloyd said. “There is a lot of talk about how businesses people can’t get customers -- nobody coming in and nobody coming out.”

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The enormous magnitude of job cuts has plunged the U.S. economy into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Some economists say the nation’s output could shrink by twice the amount that it did during the Great Recession, which ended in 2009.

The painful economic consequences of virus-related shutdowns have sparked angry protests in several states, including Florida, from crowds demanding that businesses reopen. Some governors have begun easing restrictions despite warnings from health authorities that it may be too soon to do so without sparking new infections. In Georgia, gyms, hair salons and bowling alleys can reopen Friday. Texas has reopened its state parks.

Yet those scattered reopenings won’t lead to much rehiring, especially if Americans are too wary to leave their homes. Most people say they favor stay-at-home orders and believe it won’t be safe to lift social distancing guidelines anytime soon. And there are likely more layoffs to come from many small businesses that have tried but failed to receive loans from a federal aid program.

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The total number of people who are receiving unemployment benefits has reached a record 16 million, surpassing a previous high of 12 million set in 2010, just after the 2008-2009 recession ended. This figure reflects people who have managed to navigate the online or telephone application systems in their states, have been approved for benefits and are actually receiving checks.

In some states, laid-off workers have run into the same obstacles as people in Florida. Among them are millions of freelancers, contractors, gig workers and self-employed people — a category of workers who are now eligible for unemployment benefits for the first time.